Roadkill eagle in New Brunswick carries positive conservation message

The dead bird found on a New Brunswick highway earlier this year turned out to be no ordinary roadkill specimen.

Wildlife biologists have traced the metal ring on the raptor’s leg to a bird-banding program carried out in Maine in 1977, making the avian accident victim the oldest bald eagle ever documented in the wild.

Despite its unfortunate demise in April after being struck by a car east of St. Stephen, N.B., the creature’s unprecedented longevity is seen as another hopeful sign of the resurgence of the iconic species – one of the most potent symbols of American patriotism – following its threatened extinction in the 1960s.

Bruce Peterjohn, chief of the Bird Banding Laboratory at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Patuxent Wildlife Research Center in Maryland, told Postmedia News the eagle’s record-setting age – pegged at 32 years, 10 months – suggests habitat rehabilitation efforts and other bi-national conservation measures are giving members of the majestic species a much better chance of living a long, well-fed life than they had 40 years ago.

"The fact that the BBL has recently received several reports of bald eagles reaching ages of 29 to 32-plus years suggests that their populations are responding well to the habitats available to support them in eastern North America," Peterjohn said.

"Bald eagle populations have recovered from pesticide-induced lows of the 1960s and early 1970s and are now being reported in numbers that have not been seen for more than 70 years."

The postwar use of the pesticide DDT, later found to have weakened birds’ eggshells and severely curbed eagle reproduction, eventually landed the white-headed raptor on endangered species lists across the continent.

But the banning of DDT, heightened efforts to preserve critical habitat and other steps to boost chick survival have helped bald eagle numbers rebound on both sides of the Canada-U.S. border in recent years.

Last month, a dead bird discovered on a roadside near Duluth, Minnesota, was found to have been tagged in that state in June 1978, making it the second-oldest bald eagle recorded in the wild – at 32 years, four months – after the New Brunswick individual.

Bald eagles in captivity have been known to live longer than 33 years. In fact, a flightless female bald eagle called Charlie – which has been cared for by B.C. wildlife advocates since it lost a wing after colliding with a power line decades ago – is believed to be at least 40 years old.

Based on its band number, the New Brunswick bird is known to have been tagged as a chick on June 23, 1977 – two months before the death of Elvis Presley – near Perry, Maine, about 40 kilometres south of St. Stephen in the southeast corner of the U.S. state.

Peterjohn said bird strikes by cars and trucks appear to have emerged as the leading cause of human-related bald eagle deaths.

Yet even that, he suggests, is a relatively positive sign for the species.

"Human sources of mortality – especially shooting of birds of prey – seems to be on the decline, which is a factor that allows these birds to live to the end of their normal lifespans," he said. "In fact, eagles are now more likely to die from encounters with motor vehicles than by shooting, which reflects changing societal attitudes toward birds of prey in this part of the continent."

The U.S.-Canada borderlands have always been a key part of the bald eagle’s range in North America.

Earlier this year, Quebec, Vermont and the U.S. governments each took steps to help create the 900-acre Eagle Point Park straddling the U.S.-Canada border, partly to protect prime bald eagle habitat along the cross-boundary water body Lake Memphremagog.

The park was created after the late Montreal businessman and art collector Michael Dunn left his sprawling country estate in northern Vermont and southern Quebec to be preserved as a wilderness area.